Oblivion_ stories - By David Foster Wallace Page 0,102

car which is speeding along a rural or markedly under-maintained inland State route in the sultry light of August or late July, and an interior scene of a somewhat younger and unescharotic ‘Father,’ with his iron grey hair, small, cruel mustache and thin, calf-skin gauntlets or ‘driving’ gloves, driving the vehicle, as well as views of the exterior vistas and divided center or median line distending and rushing past at an unnatural rate of speed, as if the vehicle were traveling far too fast for extant road conditions, and of a younger and noticeably more lissome and voluptuous Hope applying facial products in the small, inset mirror of the sun shade or visor as ‘Father,’ posture erect and distinguished and gazing stolidly ahead at the road, assures her that it isn’t so much dislike or ‘disapproval’ of the fellow per se, while the powerful vehicle recedes up ahead in the radiant late Summer haze, the whole brief tableau or interior ‘vision’ or shot so rapid and incongruous that it can only be truly, as it were, ‘seen’ in retrospect.

According to my own pocket watch, no more than five or six minutes had passed since we had first entered the 19th Hole. The rain against the window’s convex and mullioned and glass window came in what now appeared to be vascular or peristaltic ‘pulses’ or ‘waves,’ and during the brief, rhythmic lulls or troughs of these, one could make out the Eighteenth fairway’s ‘dog leg’’s copse of trees being bent and wrung by the storm’s violent winds, as well as tiny and fore-shortened golfing foursomes running hard for their carts or the Pro-shop’s shelter, their shoes’ spikes producing the exaggeratedly high stride of men almost running in place. Those wearing hats held them down with one hand. The 19th Hole’s long, mahogany bar and tables began gradually to fill as more and more men chased in off various parts of the course by the storm came in to get warm and wait out the rain before going home to whatever was left of their families. ‘Father’’s hand trembled as he manipulated the clip, which supposedly required great precision. Much of the more recent entrants’ conversation appeared to concern lightning and inquiring whether anyone had seen or heard lightning on the course, as well as whom among the Raritan Club’s regular members might still be ‘out there.’ Many of the men’s faces appeared unusually smooth and pinkened, their color high from the adrenaline of sudden flight. Actuarially speaking, lightning kills an average of over 300 denizens of Western industrialized nations per annum, more than the average number of accidental deaths due either to recreational boating or insect stings combined, and a substantial number of these electrocutions occur on the nation’s golf courses.

Since our Audrey had graduated as Salutatorian of her class and left the ‘nest’ of home for her freshman collegiate year at out-of-State Bryn Mawr (although she calls home faithfully once or twice a week) the previous Autumn, my wife and myself’s marriage’s single major conflict has now been over the fact that she now suddenly claims that I ‘snore,’ and that this alleged ‘snoring’ was preventing or depriving her of much needed sleep. I will, for instance, be lying quietly supine upon my back with my forearms and hands arranged across my chest (which is the customary way I prepare to gradually relax and fall asleep), and our bedroom upstairs will be pleasantly dark and quiet, with refracted lights from the light traffic on the quiet or ‘tree muffled’ residential intersection below running slowly across the bedroom walls and elongating, distending or collapsing interestingly at the north and east walls’ angles, myself gradually relaxing and descending in peaceful increments towards a good night’s sleep, until Hope suddenly cries out angrily in the darkness, claiming that my ‘snoring’ is making it impossible for her to fall asleep, and insisting that I either turn on to my side or else leave and go sleep in the ‘Guest’ bedroom (which is what, by unspoken agreement, Audrey’s former childhood bedroom is now referred to by us as) and to ‘for God’s sake’ grant her some ‘peace.’ This now occurs almost nightly—more than once on certain nights—and is intensely frustrating and upsetting. In my relaxed state, the sudden vehemence of her crying out floods my nervous system with adrenaline, cortisol or other stress related hormones, and the violence with which she thrashes up to a seated position in her bed—as well as a note of